CRIME AND DETECTION

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32164, 6 December 1969, Page 4

CRIME AND DETECTION

Churchyard Bated. By Maleelm Torrie. Michael Joseph. 24? pp.

Timothy and Alison Herring, two young, enthusiastic, and capable archaeologists, suspected that an old, and about to be demolished, inn bad been built on the site of an early church and monastery. They tried to buy the inn but found that it was part of an entailed estate belonging to a- young Lord Chilmarkstone who had recently inherited the property. However, permission was given them to excavate the site and they lived at the inn during preliminary diggings. Noises in the night, and the shifting about of some stone coffins disturbed them, and eventually things became grim when the body of Lord Chilmarkstone

turned .up In one of these peripatetic sarcophagi. Mote bodies belonging to former Lords Chilmarutones were eventually discovered in what had been the kitchen garden of the inn, and a pattern of what looked like ritual murders emerged. The gradual unfolding of the old monastic ruins, very interestingly told, and the unfolding of past secrets of the Chilmarkstone family go on together, until Timothy himself narrowly misses being turned into yet another corpse, just as he adventurously solves all that is puzzling. A Magnum for Schneider. By James Mitchell. Herbert Jenkins. ITS pp, - Callan (well known abroad . to television viewers) is an > expert shot and an assassin ; who has worked efficiently ■ for Hunter, the head of a i hush-hush British security i group. Whenever a person, t Inimical to the of

the British people cannot be» dealt with by customary legal procedures, Mr Callan’s services are called upon. When the story opens, Callan, emotionally disturbed by some aspects of Ms calling, is living in retirement and supporting himself by uncongenial employment. Hunter wants Mm back but lays down as a qualifying preliminary to permanent reemployment that Callan should despatch a Mr Schneider, now living in England and engaged in the arms-smuggWng racket His activities nave caused the death of some of Her Majesty’s soldiery. Callan reluctantly agrees and Me physical preparations, his mental reluctance, the friendship with Schneider based upon a common interact in fighting old battles with the aid of toy soldiers, and some very tough semi-private fights between Callan and various people, in which Me expertise in karate comes usefully to the fore, all make entertaining reading and are built expertly by Mr Mitchell into the story. Eventually the gunj speak, and guess who wins? Perhaps wo are left wondering if the obvious answer really te the true cue.

The Gilded Nightmare. By Hugh Pentecost Gtetencz. 214 PPReaders who have already met Pierre Chambrun, manager of the Beaumont Hotel in New York City and a talented amateur private detective, will find the author’s assorted mixture of Mgh living (the Beaumont is exclusive and expensive), tough action and swift reaction, and development of a story wMch is credible if they can believe to the people concerned, up to the usual standard, Cham-

brim’s hotel received as guests the widow of a notorious but happily dead Baron Zetterstrom, a very rich exNazi who had lived for many years on an island where apparently he was still able to cany out atrocities. The Baroness arrived at the hotel accompanied by a suite of hangers-on each more unpleasant and unlikely than herself. Horrid things happen; her poodle is tolled and mutilated; her young secretary to- similarly murdered and mutilated; her young personal guard commits various assaults upon the citizenry, and it all means a tot of bother and worry for Mark Haskell, the hotel’s public relatione man. Mr Chambrun had promised that, in the event of any shenahnlgans, he would personally throw the Baroness and her entourage out into the street It to a pity he did not do so early In the book.

Best Underworld Stories. Edited by Douglas Rutherford. Faber.24o PPThere are 22 stories in tMs collection and they toll of people engaged in crime either os a full-time vocation, or spasmodically in order to cusMon financial »%£%£££! sins in Peter Ustinov’s story, are Mlarious figures In a Charming tele. All the stories tell of the way the criminal himself views Ms activities, and whatever there to of “detection” is incidental to that Henry Cedi, Michael Gilbert, Edmund Crispin, Victor Canning, and Douglas Rutherford . Mmself are among those who contribute to tMs excellent volume which should be a most welcome find in any guest-room.